Transcript Climate Change - Day 5

Weart
“In the IPCC reports, scientists gave their
best answer. Now the main questions is
what people will choose to do.”
Science & Politics
Source: USCUSA
Released Monday December 13, 2007
Images: United States House
Image: U.S. House
From Executive Summary of House Oversight & Governmental Reform
Committee (16 months of investigation)
Image: U.S. House
(Image [“Truth” cartoon] removed due to
copyright; can be found at the artist’s website)
Winner of the 2007 Science Idol: Scientific
Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest
Systems with multiple
variables
1) Sensitivities
2) Positive feedbacks
3) Negative feedbacks
4) Thresholds (“Tipping points”)
5) Complexity (non-linear
feedbacks)
Thresholds
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Bart de Goeij
Side view
Source: Wikimedia Commons, Gertjan R.
Back view
Jim Hanson interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc4OzpgTOhk
Image from Thomas Kondenkandeth
(Image [“Mis-Information” cartoon] removed due to
copyright; can be found at the artist’s website)
Tipping points
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJNH3HT
Dpuk
Feedback Loops & Tipping
Points
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_3WJP
YY9g
Which presentation is a more effective
communication, and why?
(Cartoon [UCS Lab Coat cartiib]
removed due to copyright,
available here.)
(Cartoon [“Greener
environmental report” by
Peter Hess] removed due to
copyright, available here.)
Is there a controversy in the
science?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) said it was "firmly" standing by findings
that a rise in the use of greenhouse gases was a
factor. It was responding to a row over the
reliability of data from East Anglia University's
Climatic Research Unit. Leaked e-mail
exchanges prompted claims that data had been
manipulated. Last month, hundreds of
messages between scientists at the unit and
their peers around the world were put on the
internet along with other documents.
-BBC News
Quote 1
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack
of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth
wrote.
Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the
National Center for Atmospheric
Research, was discussing gaps in
understanding of recent variations in
temperature with other scientists.
Quote 2
“"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the
science journal] trick of adding in the real
temps to each series for the last 20 years
(ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for
Keith's to hide the decline."
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the
correspondence revealed an effort to
withhold scientific information. “This is not
a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,”
said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist
who has long faulted evidence pointing to
human-driven warming and is criticized in
the documents.
Some of the correspondence portrays the
scientists as feeling under siege by the
skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray
comment or data glitch could be turned
against them.
A scientist responds
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12
/febrile_nitwits_and_the_hacked.php?utm
_source=mostactive&utm_medium=link
Main points
1. Emails were obtained illegally. It is probably
not a coincidence it was immediately before the
international meeting in Copenhagen.
2. There appear to only be two particularly
damning emails out of the hundreds (or
thousands), both of which are interpreted out of
context.
3. There is no ambiguity in human-induced global
warming.
4. Scientists are people, and everyone has faults.
Climatologists, in particular, are under immense
public scrutiny.
NY Times coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/
earth/21climate.html
The relationship between science and ethics is
very complex.
But, the understanding that scientific findings tell
us nothing about the ethical implications of those
findings. Climate change (and stem cells) are
excellent examples of scientific research that are
highly ethically charged, yet this is not
necessarily a result of the science itself, but of
its implications.
Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in
attempting to fathom the Earth is to gain a
proper sense at our own size as a human
species; like spoiled children, we routinely
overemphasize our own importance on the
planet but underestimate the
destructiveness of our self-absorption.
- M. Bjornrud (geologist)